We’ve been a sort of clearing-house for vis­i­tors these days, thank good­ness: after three straight weeks with just me 24/7, Avery was about to start climb­ing the walls (in her own com­pletely ele­gant way of course). Our fun with Farmer Rol­lie and his fam­ily, Anne, David and Katie, and Jill, Jane and Joel were wel­come lit­tle stars in our sky of togeth­er­ness. But it was time for houseguests.

Avery had started a run­ning com­men­tary of the news broad­casts: last night some dopey talking-head was describ­ing some­thing Obama had said, and descended into one of the typ­i­cal mixed bag of metaphors, sim­i­les and poet­i­cal imagery. “He’s tread­ing on thin ground here.” Avery groaned, “All right, that’s IT! He has to choose between tread­ing on thin ice, and cov­er­ing dif­fi­cult ground, but there is no such thing as THIN GROUND!” And as we watched my favorite episode of “The Vicar of Dib­ley,” star­ring my crush, Richard Armitage, she laughed per­func­to­rily at a joke and looked at me out of the cor­ner of her eye and said, “You real­ize I’m only humor­ing you.”

So it was with great hap­pi­ness that we received Jane for her sleep­over hol­i­day of the sum­mer, this week­end. She came with her bag per­fectly packed to include every­thing she could pos­si­bly need and her father ready for a night of concert-going all on his own. My unbe­liev­ably ener­getic sis­ter was on a busi­ness trip to Indi­anapo­lis, so Jane was ours for the week­end. There was tram­polin­ing, a din­ner adven­ture to Mag­gie McFly’s (there’s noth­ing like a light-up ice cube to MAKE your pink lemon­ade really shine), fun with kit­tens, a thun­der­storm in the wee hours, some fun with a whole col­lec­tion of brightly col­ored clay lumps, a trip to the incom­pa­ra­ble Lau­rel Diner for brunch on Sun­day, sweaty visit to the play­ground and some rugged hide and seek. Through it all was Jane’s own per­sonal sound­track, fea­tur­ing her bel­lowed ver­sion of “Life is a high­way, and I wanna ride it, all night long…” When I reported this to her dot­ing father Joel, he merely sighed and said, “She doesn’t even LIKE highways!”

Of course every­where we went every­one adored Jane. This would be repet­i­tive except that every­one must get in line behind Avery and me, who find Jane to be prac­ti­cally per­fect in every way. She’s incred­i­bly artic­u­late, humor­ous, ener­getic and warm. I told Joel, “Every­one found her so charm­ing…” and Jane, lis­ten­ing in from her posi­tion on the tram­po­line, chimed in dead­pan, “Well, I’m a charm­ing lit­tle girl.”

All too soon it was time to take her home. What­ever Jill and Joel are doing to pro­duce such an agree­able, enter­tain­ing and SWEET child, they should keep doing it. She wears Avery out, though! It’s so hard for me to look back at the three and a half year old Avery, what­ever she might have been like. I just don’t remem­ber it aside from lit­tle vignettes (at the park, she came to me with a bub­blegum wrap­per and said, “Mommy, please take my detri­tus”), but look­ing at the slightly pre-teenish girl calmly nego­ti­at­ing our lim­ited CD selec­tion in the car, it seemed there had never been a goofy, heed­less, reck­less, silly, sweaty lit­tle near-baby in her place. But I know there must have been. Avery, this sum­mer, seems to be in a bub­ble of extreme calm. “I love this age,” I said the other day, and she rejoined, “You always say that, Mommy,” and I said, “Yes, but it’s really true this year.” She is won­der­ful com­pany, morn­ing, noon and night.

We came home to a black­en­ing sky and wail­ing tree branches, and a visit from Anne, David and Katie to our cheer­ful kitchen to pay homage to the kit­tens. Thank good­ness I had suc­cumbed to my house­wifely instincts the other day and thor­oughly scrubbed the kitchen floor, as we all ended up sit­ting on it, on the kit­tens’ level, mak­ing absolute fools of our­selves with those voices that even intel­li­gent peo­ple can make when faced with the fuzzy lit­tle crea­tures. These voices use a lot of “o” sounds, as in “oooooo, they are sooooo cute!” And they are. Wig­gly, fear­less, hop­ping about and bounc­ing from lap to chair to rug, chas­ing their favorite toy: a roll of red Christ­mas rib­bon! Avery mar­velled at all the things they can, do, when their human com­pa­triot Katie, the very same age, can do… just mewl­ing and ask­ing for food! I explained this, point­ing to the cats and say­ing, “All these things they can do? That’s all they’ll EVER be able to do.” “Good point, Mommy.”

And life with no stove or oven? Get­ting old. I real­ize that for most peo­ple a microwave is used for more than, say, microwave pop­corn and… melt­ing but­ter. For microwave pop­corn. So last night I reverted to child­hood and steamed up a serv­ing of good old rice pilaf, used to love it as a child, not bad now. But corn in the microwave? Don’t love it. Mush­rooms in but­ter? Can’t cook them evenly. But a thinly-pounded chicken ten­der­loin, mar­i­nated in gar­lic, gin­ger, sesame oil and soy sauce, takes about 5 min­utes to grill, and that was lovely. Today I acquired a hot plate, in des­per­a­tion. At least then I can make pasta sauce, keep it warm in the microwave, and boil water for pasta. Anne keeps invit­ing us to use her stove and oven, but I feel that the last thing a woman with a new­born baby needs is a whole house­hold camp­ing out keep­ing an eye on a roast chicken. We’ll see. The gas peo­ple informed me loftily today that they don’t par­tic­u­larly care when my stove peo­ple are com­ing (tomor­row), that they can­not get me a new gas tank until… Fri­day. There must be more peo­ple who can sup­ply gas to me?

Today was the day Avery has looked for­ward to for MONTHS: the day she got to intro­duce the joys of Red Gate Farm to her beloved Anna and Ellie. Who knew (well, actu­ally we did, but we were sad any­way) on that last, hor­ri­bly sad day of school, that in just a few weeks we’d be reunited in the super-American, sunny, blue-skied side­walks of Katonah, New York, the per­fect halfway point between Green­wich and South­bury. It was fun to catch up with Becky, lis­ten­ing to her per­fectly exag­ger­ated South­ern accent as she describes her North Car­olina adven­tures. Then it was onto home for us, and the girls’ absolute on-their-knees devo­tion to the kit­tens. What else could you expect? One kit­ten per girl, noth­ing so 20th cen­tury as shoelaces to be sure with these girls and their Crocs, their plat­form wed­gies… but other toys pre­sented them­selves: Avery’s sum­mer obses­sion of lan­yards has pro­duced end­less num­bers of key­chains, bracelets, zip­per pulls… they all made per­fect teasers for the lit­tle ones. “I just KNOW that my mom will give in when she sees these lit­tle guys!” Anna said hope­fully. “My dad’s not THAT allergic.”

Finally they tore them­selves away and we headed to the pool, for a late after­noon dip. I actu­ally fell asleep on my towel in the sun, in total relax­ation with those girls occu­pied in the pool: no lit­tle voice clam­or­ing, “Come in, Mommy, it’s really warm when you get used to it!” I felt very grownup as I swam with them for just ten min­utes and then acted like a real mother, get­ting out and read­ing my book as they played. This is what I dream of all year in Lon­don when times get com­pli­cated. Just a calm sum­mer after­noon, every­one healthy and happy, sun blink­ing in and out of the fir trees, a nice icy bot­tle of water in the pool bag, a mind­less novel to hold up against the sky, Amer­i­can voices shout­ing, a radio play­ing tacky 1980s pop hits, most of them involv­ing “Jour­ney.” Perfect.

And what lux­ury to come home, take a leisurely shower while the girls prac­ticed their tram­po­line rou­tines, then to another din­ner (enough!) at Mag­gie McFlys, and more light-up ice cubes, nat­u­rally. The girls are like a com­edy act together, with a friendship’s worth of shared sto­ries, corny jokes and what seems to me an amaz­ing sophis­ti­ca­tion for chil­dren so young. Among them these three have racked up an out­stand­ing travel: can you imag­ine they’ve been to Rome, Flo­rence, Paris, Dubai, South Africa, Morocco, Ire­land, Scot­land, and count­less cities in their own United States? It bog­gles the mind to think of the restau­rants these girls have eaten in, the flights and hotels and tours and muse­ums and plays… and yet what really makes them happy is three stray kit­tens and a light-up ice cube. There’s a les­son there for sure.

We stopped at Anne’s to deliver some emer­gency cat food to her two, and now the girls are play­ing “Horseopoly,” at least when they can tear them­selves away from the kit­tens. I’m very happy with my lit­tle house­hold. But tomor­row night: I’m cook­ing in, no mat­ter how sick we are of grilling! Any new sug­ges­tions grate­fully accepted…

So yes­ter­day at this time I had one 11-year-old girl under my roof: tonight I have the same, plus a 3-and-a-half-year-old girl, and THREE KIT­TENS! I am not mak­ing this up. I’ll give you a brief ver­sion as befits the mother of all these peo­ple who must get a decent night’s sleep in order to take care of them all at 7 a.m. tomorrow…

Avery and mean­dered over to Mid­dle­bury (well, it shouldn’t have been a mean­der, but a dead straight shot, only I am rub­bish at direc­tions as any­one will tell you) to visit a tack shop and buy a hel­met for her, and as we approached the shop, we passed a sign that said, “Tag Sale: Free Kit­tens.” Well, it was but the work of a moment to stop by on our way back out of Mid­dle­bury, and to explain in all sin­cer­ity that we couldn’t really adopt the kit­tens, as we live in Lon­don, but… they and their five sib­lings had been found in a storm drain and aban­doned by their mother and… I felt the peo­ple who res­cued them had done all any­one could expect any­one to do, and now there they were, liv­ing in a house whose land­lord had for­bid­den cats.

So Avery tried to play the voice of rea­son, but it was no use; we took the kit­tens and are now faced with find­ing homes for them, but how hard can it be? They are com­pletely DAR­LING. Avery has named them Cap­tain James Hast­ings, Amanda, and Lucy Eliz­a­beth. For short, Hast­ings, Mandy and Lizzie. They are cozily ensconced in my laun­dry room, just on the night of Jane’s sleep­over adventure.

And there you have it: How To Com­pli­cate Your Life in Two Easy Steps: bor­row your per­fect niece, and acquire three new ani­mals… all in one after­noon. Try it: any­one can do it!

Well, it took awhile: your odd power out­age, fence destruc­tion, under­foot deceased rodent… but today is what I think of when I imag­ine Red Gate Farm: bright blue, unmarked skies (unless you count a cou­ple of air­plane trails), green, green grass and trees, red barns, sparkling bird bath (I can­not say it is clean, because there’s a whole layer of algae or moss or some­thing, liv­ing under the sur­face, but the water is clean), bird­song to go with it. And a per­fect visit to the horses up the road, as you see: what sort of peo­ple res­cue aban­doned horses and give them homes? Our dear neigh­bors Mike, Con­nie and Tay­lor, it turns out. We can’t wait till they’re liv­ing out in our back meadow (the horses, I mean), just an elec­tri­cal fence or two from now.

I still have some lurk­ing home­owner issues (of course no one has been back to see my long-suffering fence since last week, but I’m not feel­ing very con­fronta­tional today so I have declined to har­rass or chivvy my “Acci­dent Sur­vey Report Con­sul­tant Man­ager” or what­ever her title is). Namely, this morn­ing as I walked past my stove I had to admit what I’ve sus­pected for sev­eral days: a gas leak. It was but the work of a moment to call the num­ber on my gas tank only to be told that it’s no longer in use. The very same with the num­ber I got from 411. Hmmm. A lit­tle assid­u­ous googling, how­ever, and the guy is on his way. I refuse to be dis­tracted from my extremely good humor, how­ever, and plan to see his prompt response as a good thing, not the first salvo in a long gas-related episode.

Con­tin­u­ing on the propane theme, I have run out of the pre­cious gas for my grill, so in true fem­i­nist style I man­aged to fol­low my brother in law’s pre­cise instruc­tions (I love hav­ing some­one to turn to who is not only as pre­cise as I am, but under­stands igno­rance and does not make fun of it!), and removed the tank from the grill, pock­eted all the bits and pieces that attached it, and bob’s your uncle. Well, I haven’t actu­ally replaced it yet, which will require a trip to the hard­ware store and ask­ing for some­thing I don’t really know how to iden­tify, and hop­ing I get what I need, not to men­tion am able to re-attach it and cook din­ner with­out explod­ing us all to king­dom come.

Luck­ily (or not) “us all” is only Avery and me. We have decided that we can’t invite Anne, David and Katie to din­ner EVERY night. But it’s been a cou­ple, so per­haps we can lure them for home­made pizza tonight, and grilled veg­eta­bles? I long to take a hun­dred pic­tures of Katie, just to remem­ber how tiny she is this sum­mer, and to put her with Avery, if only to high­light the con­trast between new­born and nearly-teen. Avery has crossed some invis­i­ble line this sum­mer from little-girldom to bud­ding inde­pen­dent per­son. She is really enjoy­ing being sent to the Star­bucks order desk by her­self, or sent to get red pep­pers when I’m already in line at the gro­cery. We are toy­ing with the notion of hav­ing her go to Block­buster Video while I go to the Gap a few doors down. I’ve ascer­tained at the library that she can­not be dropped off there until age 12 (next sum­mer, then), but she is happy to go upstairs to the children’s sec­tion on her own, check out her own books and pack them up, while I hang around the ground floor doing my upright ab crunches (don’t ask, I’ve become com­pletely obsessed with how many I can do in a day while still not seem­ing to exercise).

Avery is also inter­ested this sum­mer in… shop­ping. On a rainy day this week we found our­selves at some name­less mall in Water­bury, Con­necti­cut, shop­ping at a fairly hideous but harm­less store called Lim­ited Too. I remem­ber a store called The Lim­ited from my own teen days, and I also remem­ber car­ing about clothes and shop­ping, although it seems to be from a very long, long dis­tance of about 30 years and about 20 pounds. Could any­one have been as thin as I was as a teenager? How on earth did I find any clothes to fit? But now it’s fun to see Avery try things on. “Are these sparkles an affront, or are they kind of cute?” “Well, if it was ONLY sparkles, or lace, or sequins, I can see the point. But all three?” Luck­ily we agree on most things. The arrange­ment is that we don’t either of us buy any­thing that the other absolutely HATES.

How relax­ing is a day when the tasks involve noth­ing more stren­u­ous than wash­ing all the kitchen rugs and hang­ing them in the sun to dry, walk­ing in a leisurely way across the sun-dappled road to see what the mail­man has brought (every sum­mer John is aghast at the num­ber of val­ue­less used books that Avery and I man­age to order, for a dol­lar apiece, from book­sellers all over the coun­try, all to end up in our rusty old white mail­box that still bears the name of our for­mer homeowner).

***************

I spoke too soon. No, it is even more pathetic than that. I TYPED too soon. It was not only a gas leak, but a gas leak in… my stove. The nice gas guys came out to look at the tank, and after a bit of mas­cu­line work­ing about and explain­ing to me nicely about pipes and con­nec­tions and what­not, and spray­ing some mys­te­ri­ous liq­uid onto rub­ber bits and look­ing for bub­bles which would mean some­thing very, VERY awful, they implied that we will all die of asphyx­i­a­tion on a Wednes­day at 1:30 p.m.… The long and short of it is, I am now wait­ing for a stove repair­man to come… Tues­day. As John’s mom says, I’m the only per­son who would see this not as an oppor­tu­nity to leave the dish­washer empty for four days, but as a hor­ri­ble prison sen­tence in which I’ll have to eat… OUT.

Any­way. I refused to let it spoil the gor­geous­ness of the day. I refused to be dis­tracted or made surly by the fact that the guys from the gas com­pany had dropped my sand­wich bag full of sugar onto the kitchen floor, or that when they pulled the old, OLD Indi­ana pine bench out from the ter­race wall to look at the gas con­nec­tion they pulled the arm off the bench, or that I was look­ing at one sleep­over with a three and a half year old tomor­row, and another on Mon­day with two girls, and pos­si­bly two fur­ther sets of lunch guests… with no stove.

Accord­ingly, we decided to rise above it ALL. I thought about din­ner. No stove, no oven. No boiled water for corn, mashed pota­toes, no steamed rice, no baked chicken or meat­loaf, no pasta, no risotto, no soup, no casseroles… hmm. Finally I remem­bered about Joel’s instruc­tions on the grill propane tank. And would you believe I was capa­ble of detach­ing it, stor­ing it in the car, and trans­port­ing it all the way to the hard­ware store where I exchanged it for a full tank. Bril­liant! Some­thing I never dreamed of in lit­tle sleepy South­bury: I had to drive it around to the back of the shop to have it filled up: appar­ently, hav­ing an empty tank of propane that one sim­ply walks into the shop is tan­ta­mount to a bomb threat. Who knew.

Any­way, off Avery and I went to the pool for an hour or so of sim­ple, brain­less hap­pi­ness under blue skies and sur­rounded by shouts of the eter­nal, inevitable “Marco… Polo,” miss­ing our friend Bar­bara, the all-knowing, all-seeing for­mer school­teacher who always knows where to get the fresh­est salmon or the nicest dried flow­ers or newest book­store or a new rid­ing hel­met (that didn’t work out so well, as Avery’s helmet’s been on order for two weeks and count­ing…) who has headed to Alaska on a cruise. The pool was so much qui­eter with­out her! I spent some time swim­ming UP UP UP to the sur­face to see that ONE per­fect green tree I love against the blue blue sky. Some­how it always makes me think of Maine: the seren­ity, con­trast of col­ors, fresh crispness…

Well, it turns out, on our return home, that one can pro­duce a per­fectly DELI­CIOUS din­ner with­out a stove or oven. I promise you, and here it is. Of course, I don’t know if it will taste even half as good with­out your hav­ing Avery’s tram­polin­ing songs in the back­ground… but you can try.

Spatch-cocked Grilled Chicken
(serves 4-ish)

1 large organic chicken
2 tbsps soft­ened but­ter
1 tbsp Fox Point Sea­son­ing from Pen­zeys (again!)
4 tbsps goat cheese
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp sea salt

Put the chicken on a cut­ting board upside down (breast-side down). With a VERY sharp knife, split the chicken down the mid­dle. Choose one side or other of the back­bone and sim­ply CUT it down the mid­dle. Once it is cut through, flat­ten the chicken out and cut out the back­bone if you like (not necessary).

Place the chicken breast side up on a plat­ter. Loosen the skin over the breast and squish half the goat cheese under the skin of each breast. Mix the but­ter and herby mix. Then spread the herby but­ter over the top of the chicken.

Heat the grill to about 400 degrees and place the chicken, flat­tened out, breast side down. Close grill and cook for 20 min­utes. Turn the chicken and cook another 20 min­utes. Turn over again and cook skin-side down while you fin­ish up side dishes.

*******************

Jack Curran’s Grilled Pota­toes
(serves 4)

1 large Yukon Gold potato per per­son, plus 1, peeled and sliced thin
1 white onion, sliced thin
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
1/2 stick but­ter
sea salt and pepper

Place 2 long pieces of alu­minum foil in a sort of t-shape, and pile pota­toes, onions, and gar­lic onto the cen­ter. Dot with but­ter and sprin­kle with salt and pep­per. Fold up foil pack­age so it’s air­tight. Cook at same time and tem­per­a­ture as chicken: in other words 40 min­utes, at 400 degrees, turn­ing twice.

**********************

Grilled Veg­eta­bles
(serves 4)

2 pep­pers of any color
1 bunch aspara­gus
hand­ful mush­rooms, sliced THICK
2 tbsps olive oil
sea salt and pep­per
gar­lic salt

Cut veg­eta­bles into nice serv­ing pieces and arrange on a plate. Pour over olive oil and sprin­kle with sea­son­ings. Let mar­i­nate while every­thing else cooks, then grill for about 15 minutes.

********************
Microwaved Sweet­corn (seri­ously!)
(1 ear per per­son, at least)

Shuck corn and place on a plate that allows itself to rotate in the microwave. Allow 3 min­utes per ear, high power.

***********************

Well, this is a deli­cious din­ner and NO one at your table will ask why the stove and oven are chilly and dark. I’m not sure how this grill-only method will serve me for three a meals a day times four day times one tod­dler times one 7-year-old times two 11-year-olds… but I’ll let you know! In the mean­time, it’s that blue sky we’re con­cen­trat­ing on, isn’t it?

So! I know to many of you (namely all my neigh­bors), a deer is not a notable occur­rence in your back­yard. But we are still excited! Espe­cially on a thank­lessly rainy, yet not even emergency-quality rainy day. We woke up and felt point­less, even to the point of doing an unnec­es­sary load of laun­dry (you know what I’m say­ing: “at least I have LAUN­DRY going!”), when we spot­ted this lovely lady in our yard. “DEER DEER DEER” was all I could say, so Avery came run­ning and we fol­lowed her out, across the road to Anne’s gar­den. Need­less to say, when Avery saw this pho­to­graph she said firmly, “Do not even THINK of crop­ping out any of that gor­geous foliage!” Thus spake the city child, to whom any leaves are good. Fair enough. It was mag­i­cal to see her. I men­tioned her to the UPS guy and he nod­ded sagely. “Have you seen her babies? Full of them white spots they keep for a while.”

So it was one of those days. We’re actu­ally savor­ing today and tomor­row being some­what… bored, because life is about to heat up, and I don’t mean tem­per­a­ture. The rain today kept us from our pool life, and I man­aged a good por­tion of “Gen­eral Hos­pi­tal,” plus we were des­per­ate enough to go to a mall in Water­bury and buy jeans and tank tops for Avery’s school year, plus new white t-shirts for me (the sta­ple of my wardrobe, rain or shine, cold or hot). I was happy to call it a day at 6 p.m. or so and start cooking.

I have alighted upon the per­fect salmon. I would like to say I grilled it on our grill, but I ran out of propane and for­got to get another can­is­ter, so frankly I heated up a skil­let really really hot and did it there. A mix­ture of Pen­zeys Fox Point Sea­son­ing (I promise you I’m buy­ing a dozen bot­tles the next time I’m at the shop, I hope on Sun­day), olive oil, lemon juice and gar­lic salt. Smear it over the flesh side of the salmon fil­lets and let sit for a half hour or so. Then get your skil­let really REALLY hot and cook it on first the skin side for about 8 min­utes then turn it to the flesh side just for a bit, to cook the sur­face. GORGEOUS.

And I have nar­rowed down the per­fect bean salad, from my last three or so attempts. All four beans: lit­tle white, lit­tle red, kid­ney and edamame (soy). Then sugar snap peas, sliced lit­tle, red onion diced, red pep­per sliced thin, and LOTS of corn, NOT cooked first. Seri­ously, raw. A nice lemony horse­rad­ishy dress­ing, DONE. You’ll love it.

And say you planned to make mashed pota­toes to go with your salmon but you both felt too full as you cooked? Set them aside for the next day and make:

Per­fect Break­fast Home Fries
(serves 4)

4 Yukon Gold pota­toes, peeled and boiled
1 tbsp but­ter
dash each: paprika, gar­lic salt, dried pars­ley, oregano, what­ever you like!

Cut the cold pota­toes into wedges. Heat the but­ter till smok­ing and throw in the pota­toes. Sprin­kle with all the herbs and toss till crispy and browned. Per­fect with a fried egg, or Avery would tell you, with a blue­berry pancake.

*******************

Yes­ter­day we cleaned our­selves up and went to lunch at our neigh­bors’ house: Farmer Rol­lie and his wife Judy and their sons Rol­lie, Jr., Chris and Todd, plus their helper farmer Eric, although Todd was miss­ing, hay­ing in the field beyond. First off, the pur­pose of our visit: to help Judy plan the “Eng­lish tea” wed­ding shower she’s giv­ing for Rol­lie, Jr.‘s fiance Trish in August. Avery was brought on board as the offi­cial con­sul­tant: what sort of sand­wiches, what sorts of bread, what cakes, what tea, what dishes. We solemnly reported what we knew, but I must report that the fin­ished plans have a decid­edly Judy­ish feel: iced tea! Fruit punch and NO Pimms! With a cham­pagne punch she felt we needed a fruit one with­out alco­hol, fair enough. A Vic­to­ria sponge was floated, but met with less enthu­si­asm than the Eton Mess I have promised to bring. Please, Lord, let there be ready-made meringues in South­bury, Con­necti­cut. I could never make them, I’m sure. Plus hav­ing Amer­i­can rather than Eng­lish straw­ber­ries will lessen the qual­ity, but what can we do?

After our con­sul­ta­tions, Judy pro­duced a chicken salad with dried cran­ber­ries (sorry, anti-fruit and meat John, it was lovely), and a quiche topped with sliv­ered almonds and chopped chives. So light and deli­cious, with a puff-pastry crust. But I must say: the piece de resis­tance was… Rollie’s home-smoked, home-caught smoked blue­fish. The day he came to fix (bless his adorable heart) my dri­ve­way, and stopped to have a bite of break­fast, he told me the story of his Fourth of July fish­ing expe­di­tion. “The fel­lows wanted me to spend the night at the cabin, but I like to sleep in my own bed. I told ‘em, no, I’ll be along ear­lier than you’ll be ready, and sure enough, I was up at 5, read the paper, drank my cof­fee, and went along to the cabin before they were even up!” They all went out together in a cou­ple of lit­tle boats (I wish I could remem­ber where, but because I didn’t know the name it didn’t stick with me) and what with all the rain, the fish were jumpin’. “We went out along that reef, you know the one [never mind that of course I didn’t], and boy, were those fish alive. We went deep a cou­ple times and then they were big­ger. But half the time we fished with just the flies, no worms or any­thing. You never saw any­thing like it. A bucket full of blue­fish, all we’re allowed, before you knew it.”

“BLUE­FISH?” I nearly screamed. “I trav­elled all the way up from Tribeca to 72nd Street at least twice a year, just to go to Zabar’s and get smoked blue­fish, and half the time they’d be OUT,” and Rol­lie just looked at me with smug sat­is­fac­tion. “We had more than we could smoke,” he gloated. “Stop, stop,” I said finally.

But at Judy’s lunch table, along­side the chicken salad and quiche, was a lovely plate of smoked blue­fish! Rol­lie smiled rogu­ishly. “Thought you’d enjoy that. Did you hear,” he said to Judy, “she likes smoked blue­fish.” I am hop­ing SIN­CERELY that the next time he goes fish­ing he either invites me or gives me some. “Now, I know you’re no morn­ing gal,” he teased me, so I jumped in. “But I’d get up at sun­rise OR BEFORE to catch some blue­fish if you’d let me smoke it with you.”

He truly thinks I’d like to con­vert an old refrig­er­a­tor into a smoker. This pre­sumes that I have an old refrig­er­a­tor at my dis­posal (a com­mon occur­rence at Rollie’s premises), which as it hap­pens I don’t, but if I did, I’d be more than happy to con­vert it to a fish-smoker. Lus­cious, sim­ply lus­cious, even with Ritz crack­ers, when what it cries out for is a crusty baguette and some d’Affinois cheese to go with it, if you want to go all big-city and frou-frou. I LOVE smoked bluefish.

Is there any­thing nicer than a nap? I feel deca­dent if I nap on my own bed, but the guest bed, with its quilted barn-red bed­spread and fluffy feather pil­lows, is def­i­nitely a pos­si­bil­ity. It was very cozy to hear Avery bounc­ing on the tram­po­line as I drifted off… wak­ing up in time for our ten­nis les­son! I am lov­ing our ten­nis lessons and only wish we had them more often. But we can’t afford any more indul­gence of our lack of skill than once a week! Val watched ball after ball sail over the chain-link fence. “One, two, three strikes we start push-ups!” The lux­ury of the green­ery, men golf­ing nearby, the ambi­ence of the elderly-people’s hotel ten­nis court set­ting, the blue sky slowly set­tling into cloudy sug­ges­tion of a rain­storm… so evoca­tive of Amer­i­can summer.

So we’ve been liv­ing not Thoreau’s “lives of quiet des­per­a­tion,” but rather lives of… just plain quiet! Lovely to wake up when we wish and have blue­berry pan­cakes and rasp­ber­ries for break­fast (actu­ally, I make this but I myself have become devoted to V8 and yogurt, and mostly look at the berries to see if it’s time to give them to the ground­hog). We visit the library almost every day, and spend lots of time look­ing up from our read­ing to see if any live­stock is around. Did I tell you about the day I heard honk­ing and looked up to see a wild turkey pur­sued by a red fox? Crazy.

It’s inde­scrib­ably cozy to know that Anne and Baby Katie are across the road, and we spend a lot of time walk­ing across with dishes of a new bean salad to share, or a chicken dish I know is good, and hear­ing about Katie’s activ­i­ties. So much nice than so many sum­mers when only Fri­days brought the lights across the road. Dave has had to go into the city to teach, but I make sure to light the can­dles in the win­dows so he knows we’re here, when he pulls up in the dri­ve­way across the road.

Tonight John is on his way back to Lon­don from Qatar, sleep­ing, one hopes, that seven-hour jour­ney to bring him back to just a shower at home and another work­ing day. Good­ness, he will have sto­ries to tell once he is at Red Gate Farm with us, hav­ing done noth­ing more inter­est­ing than rid the laun­dry room of spi­der webs on a given Wednes­day! Tonight there was a bit of excite­ment, though, as I was cook­ing din­ner: we heard the roar of a piece of machin­ery in the back meadow and there was the lit­tle fam­ily from up the road: Mark on his John Deere what­ever machine, his wife Con­nie who stud­ies bats and trains res­cue dogs, and their lit­tle 3-year-old girl Tay­lor. “At last!” I thought. “Some­one to take the rest of the exper­i­men­tal bean salad!” so I ran across the lawn and heard all about their tri­als and tribu­la­tions dur­ing the black­out (no, they did NOT have a gen­er­a­tor, as I assumed they would). Nice neigh­bors, and look­ing for­ward to pas­tur­ing the horses out back there when the final fenc­ing bits come through.

Well, you’re up to date. The humid­ity con­tin­ues, so I have put on the AC cau­tiously, after turn­ing EVERY­THING else off! Per­haps tomor­row will be a pool day… enjoy this July evening, everyone.

Good­ness. I know our fore­moth­ers lived with­out elec­tric­ity (and in turn with­out ice, or a fan to make white noise to put them to sleep, and with­out any means to move around hot air, these three being my major require­ments for a happy phys­i­cal exis­tence in sum­mer). But they didn’t live with­out it UNEX­PECT­EDLY. I am pos­i­tive I would actu­ally have been a quite happy per­son with­out elec­tric lights or refrig­er­a­tors, were I pre­pared ahead of time not to have them. To read by can­dle­light! To await the arrival of the ice man, bring­ing his great blocks to fill my quaint ice­box, giv­ing lit­tle sliv­ers of ice to my docile chil­dren to suck through pieces of muslin cut from my castoff aprons! I could do it. But sud­denly to try to brush one’s teeth and there’s no water… because there’s no elec­tric­ity… because one’s water comes from a well?

It was all down­hill from there. One evening had been enough, espe­cially when I knew I caused it myself, run­ning the AC and dryer at the same time, naughty me. But the next day started out hor­ri­bly, and got worse. Let me explain.

I came down­stairs after our light­less night, feel­ing a bit out of sorts, even cranky, and stepped down the two steps into the kitchen to squash… a mouse. A real MOUSE. Under my foot, shod thank good­ness, but still. In dis­be­lief I turned around and lifted up my foot and there it was… still in its death throes. Unfor­tu­nately I had screamed when the foot first encoun­tered the thing under­neath it, and so poor Avery had to be wit­ness to the snuff­ing out of a mouse life. She insisted that I get a piece of card­board and bring the poor thing out­side, so I did, and we installed him under­neath a lit­tle flow­er­ing bush. Then there was the mess to clean up, hor­ri­ble. Where is my vaca­tion? I kept won­der­ing in a pathet­i­cally self-absorbed way. Why is every day spent fix­ing bro­ken things, watch­ing things get bro­ken before my eyes, waaah. I hate being a grownup. The sort of prob­lems one has, I remind myself, when one has no real prob­lems. But still.

The day sort of descended from there into a rea­son­less gloom. We repaired to the library in a sort of cocoon of sweat, and to the post office and bank and gro­cery, and to the video store, each time being greeted as we emerged with the SLAP of heavy, humid air. A desul­tory lunch, and that empty mid-afternoon when you know you’re going out to din­ner and so there is no food shop­ping, no food prep, and since it was Sat­ur­day, no lovely soaps to watch. We hung out on the ter­race feel­ing at loose ends, and then sud­denly the sky that had been blue was white, and the trees that had hung life­less in the heat were blow­ing into a frenzy, and the air that had been close and silent was whipped into a sort of fright­en­ing gale. It reminded me of my child­hood tor­nado scares, and as such was mildly nos­tal­gic and exciting!

Rain fell in a tor­rent for per­haps 15 min­utes, and I imag­ined with totally unjus­ti­fied opti­mism that the air tem­per­a­ture dropped. It was in this mis­placed spirit of hope that I took the pho­tographs of Red Gate Farm in the rain: imag­in­ing that we would be in some dif­fer­ent state when the storm was over… I ended up conked out for a half hour in a sweaty nap upstairs, to be awoken by Avery bound­ing up the steps say­ing, “Dave was here ask­ing if we had lit a fire. He smells smoke…” No, no fire. But an hour later, we real­ized there was no power, and it was but the work of a moment to inves­ti­gate up the road and find a fallen live wire, in the road. And no power for any of us. Drat.

We had made plans to meet Jill, Joel and Jane in their lit­tle town for din­ner at what Jane called adorably, “a Japan­ese steak­house.” To hear a three and a half year old utter these words, pro­nounced com­pletely cor­rectly, is really some­thing: you want to make her say them over and over. So we aban­doned Dave to his inves­ti­ga­tions and report­ings (I was relieved it wasn’t me call­ing up the power com­pany, after the night before. I could just hear the report: “It’s that crank up to San­ford Road again, sir..”) We had a com­pletely deli­cious din­ner at “Ichiro,” a hibachi and sushi bar,” for my first foray into that expe­ri­ence of a din­ner cooked with great chore­o­graphed panache on a flam­ing stove, around which we all sat in vary­ing degrees of fear. Joel kept mak­ing up news­pa­per head­lines about Avery, “Promis­ing Scholar Escapes Injury by Flames to Eyes by Pre­scrip­tion Lenses at Local Japan­ese Restau­rant…” We had lus­cious filet mignon and chicken, mixed veg­eta­bles, fried rice and noo­dles, not to men­tion a thin mush­room broth, and the only bizarre thing: an ice­berg let­tuce salad to be eaten with… chop­sticks! Such is the melt­ing pot that is the United States of America.

Great fun to be together, eat great food all of whose ingre­di­ents were obvi­ous, taste a new dip­ping sauce made with wasabi mus­tard and, I think, gin­ger. Next time I will try the sushi, because it looked fab­u­lous: intri­cate and beau­ti­ful. And there was no sushi smell, always a good sign.

We wan­dered around their dar­ling down­town area, feel­ing stuffed, and then real­ized we should let Jane go to bed and also find out if all was well in our neck of the woods. A lovely sun­set drive back to the hilar­i­ous audio­book by Sharyn McCrumb, “Miss­ing Susan,” and down our road, think­ing as we approached, “All is well! There are lights across the road!” Only they were… can­dles. Quaint and lovely, but… not a good sign. We mean­dered over to find David, Anne and Baby Katie sur­rounded by can­dles, with Dave read­ing aloud from an anthol­ogy of ghost sto­ries from the Mid­west! And you know what? Why does it take a black­out, a true emer­gency, for good friends to take the time to sit for two hours and sim­ply… chat? It was LOVELY. No sched­ule, noth­ing to antic­i­pate needed to be done, because there was noth­ing TO be done. We caught up on Katie’s achieve­ments (they change quickly between weeks four and six), Avery’s school expec­ta­tions for next year, my writ­ing class, their plans for var­i­ous house projects, all the leisurely, neigh­borly, friendly top­ics that could eas­ily have been pushed to one side all sum­mer, but for an evening with no choice but to hang out. There is a clear les­son to be learned there! But what… Cre­ate your own emer­gency, per­haps, if none is pre­sented to you by Mother Nature.

Finally I felt we were over­stay­ing our wel­come with the most relaxed new par­ents one can imag­ine, and made noises about leav­ing. Just then we heard the GLO­RI­OUS sounds and saw the GLO­RI­OUS sights of a lum­ber­ing truck with a search­light, and knew help had come. Dave and I went out to greet the guy, as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of our respec­tive needy fam­i­lies, and Dave walked us across the road with his handy-dandy windup flash­light. Avery is NOT keen on the dark, and so I lit can­dles as fast as I could, and got us upstairs to my bed­room to wait out the repairs. Avery was such a trooper, learn­ing to light can­dles, find­ing a truly com­fort­ing and famil­iar book to read… but noth­ing could dis­guise the fact that we were SMOTH­ER­ING. All those can­dles, not a breath of air. The hours ticked by. Finally around 12, Avery crawled into her swel­ter­ing bed. Then by 1:30 or so, the work­ers departed and our lights came back on. Sigh. Just air move­ment with the fan was HEAVEN.

Woke up this morn­ing to a totally dif­fer­ent mood! Every­thing seemed pos­si­ble and happy, although the day was even warmer, if any­thing. Did you know about ion­i­sa­tion and mood­i­ness? Nei­ther did I. But appar­ently some peo­ple can be affected by the state of the weather before and dur­ing a storm. Cer­tainly I was in a funk all yesterday.

In my funk, and last night dur­ing the post-mouse-murder-blackout, I thought of ways to cheer myself up. And don’t lots of peo­ple say, “When you need to get out of a blue mood, think of some­one else instead of your­self”? So I thought of my neigh­bors across the road, just as hot and sweaty and in the dark as we were, only going through it with a new­born baby. Wouldn’t it be nice to feed them? And the result, this evening, was SPEC­TAC­U­LAR! If I say so myself. One of those spon­ta­neous, deli­cious meals that owes its suc­cess as much to the com­pany and the mood of appre­cia­tive­ness as it does to the food. What is it about friends whose con­ver­sa­tion is always intel­li­gent but never tor­tured, who require only about 5 min­utes’ catchup after a 6-month sep­a­ra­tion to feel nor­mal? They are irre­place­able, and mag­i­cally, this sum­mer there is one more of them. Long live Katie.

But the food was lovely. Very sum­mery and light, and involv­ing almost no last-minute hot stove or oven. You can boil the corn early in the day, and bake the fin­ished corn dish just at the end.

I’m a huge fan of Pen­zeys spices, and with a shop in my sis­ter and brother in law’s home­town, I’m happy to rec­om­mend it to you. All in all, a good sum­mer menu for a hot day. And a lot of it you can buy at your local pro­duce stand, which always feels good.

Herbed Grilled Pork Ten­der­loin
(serves 6 at least)

2 pork ten­der­loin, mem­branes and fat removed if you like
Pen­zeys “Fox Point Sea­son­ing” (shal­lots, chives and scal­lions)
Pen­zeys “Old World Sea­son­ing” (an amaz­ing com­bi­na­tion of paprika, salt, sugar, cel­ery, gar­lic, onion, black pep­per, pars­ley, dill, car­away, turmeric, dill, bay leaf, mar­jo­ram, thyme, savory, basil, rose­mary!)
juice of 1 lime
splash olive oil

Place ten­der­loins in a Ziplock freezer bag with all the other ingre­di­ents and slosh them around. Let mar­i­nate in a cool envi­ron­ment until ready to cook. Pre­pare grill to 400 degrees and cook on each side for about 10 min­utes for medium-ish (pink­ish in the mid­dle), or longer if you like. Let rest for a cou­ple of min­utes and then slice thick, on the bias.

*****************

Another Great Bean Salad
(serves 6)

1 cup shelled cooked edamame (soy beans)
1 soup-size can pinto beans, WELL rinsed and drained
hand­ful sugar snap peas sliced into small bites
1/2 red onion, diced
1 cup cooked drained lentils
2 tbsps wasabi horse­rad­ish may­on­naise
juice of 1 lemon
sea salt to taste
2 tbsps olive oil

Could it be any eas­ier? Mix every­thing well, and enjoy. It’s got every­thing to rec­om­mend it, this salad: fiber, what­ever won­der­ful things the super­food soy offers, lentils, the crunch of sugar snap peas, the snap of wasabi. Lovely.

********************

Scal­loped Corn
(serves 6)

6 ears corn, lightly boiled, ker­nels cut off
3 cloves gar­lic, finely minced
1/2 cup light cream
hand­ful grated pecorino or parmesan

Spray a pie plate with non­stick spray. Scat­ter half the corn and then scat­ter the gar­lic, then scat­ter the rest of the corn. Pour cream over and sprin­kle with cheese. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 min­utes. Heav­enly aroma!

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Mar­i­nated Grilled Veg­eta­bles
(serves 6)

1 red pep­per, 1 orange pep­per, 1 yel­low pep­per, quar­tered and de-seeded
1 bunch aspara­gus
2 large flat mush­rooms, cut in thick slices
large bunch broc­col­ini
1/2 cup olive oil
2 tsps gar­lic salt
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tbsp sea salt
fresh ground pepper

Put veg­eta­bles into a Ziplock freezer bag with all other ingre­di­ents and slosh around, as you did the pork ten­der­loin, until nicely mixed. Leave in plain sight as you cook every­thing else and squish the ingre­di­ents when­ever you pass the bag. Cook at the same tem­per­a­ture but in less time as the pork ten­der­loin: about 400 degrees for aout 15 min­utes. Stir often as they cook.

*******************

Well, enjoy your Sun­day evening. We are grate­ful for (in this order): fam­ily and friends (absent and present), good healthy food, library books, chip­munks and ground­hogs, and… Thomas Edi­son. That’s the guy, isn’t it?

Sev­eral Notes to Self: first one up… remem­ber last sum­mer when the first really hot day, I mean REALLY hot day came and you decided to turn on the AC? Did you hap­pen to be doing laun­dry at the same time? Well, don’t! I did the same thing tonight and then blasted into total recall as the elec­tric­ity shut down and we were plunged into dark­ness at 9:30. Avery does not do tremen­dously well in total dark­ness, plus any unex­pected set of cir­cum­stances con­vinces her com­pletely that I’m a total nin­com­poop idiot and inca­pable of han­dling any­thing the least bit chal­leng­ing. “I’ll fol­low you with a can­dle, Mommy, in case there’s any­thing I can do,” she said bravely, until she dis­cov­ered that fol­low­ing me would involve… drum roll please… the BASE­MENT. EEEKK!!!

Any­way, I flipped the dryer switch, the AC switch and the thing marked “MAIN” (feel­ing con­fi­dent that, with­out an E on the end, I wouldn’t inad­ver­tently cut off elec­tri­cal sup­plies to an entire Down East state). Noth­ing hap­pened. Waited five min­utes or so (in the TOTAL base­ment dark­ness, sur­rounded, I knew, by mouse­traps, spi­der­webs and… well, that’s all, actu­ally, besides a Christ­mas tree stand and sev­eral bot­tles of flat cham­pagne). Tried the switches again, noth­ing. So I called the power com­pany and reported it and lit ten thou­sand votive can­dles and fielded Avery’s panic.

Then, in sheer bore­dom, I went down there once more and ran­domly threw the switches again, and HAL­LELU­JAH! Every­thing back on, although I imme­di­ately turned off the dryer. I can def­i­nitely go until tomor­row with­out my pool tow­els being cozy and tumble-dried. Then, how­ever, I real­ized the power com­pany was still send­ing some­one out, and sure enough, up our dear, dark road came an enor­mous truck with a huge CRANE and a search­light. He passed our house despite our sem­a­phores of “stop, stop,” no doubt because the house was lit up like a Christ­mas tree so clearly we didn’t need him? But I said, “He’ll be back,” so we sat down among the mos­qui­toes and moths and ants on the front step, admired that por­tion of the picket fence we could see if we didn’t turn our heads toward the bit felled by the gravel guy… and back the elec­tri­cal guy came. He trained his super-duper search­lights directly into the bed­room of the baby across the road, I have no doubt, as I waved wildly through his wind­screen. Then we saw him don an orange plas­tic hard hat, and pick up a pair of GOG­GLES (Always Be Pre­pared) and descend from the cab of the truck.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, “but I called the power com­pany back to say every­thing was OK, but I was on hold FOR­EVER.” “That’s all right, ma’am,” he said, doff­ing his hat and mak­ing me feel incred­i­bly OLD, “we were in the neigh­bor­hood any­way.” “Well, it’s good to know you’re on the job,” I said, and shook his hand. He got back in his very impres­sive truck (still wear­ing the hard hat, although the gog­gles had not appeared), and drove off, honk­ing lightly to indi­cate his sol­i­dar­ity as he passed.

Sigh.

Friends indeed. What would we do with­out them? They smooth our dri­ve­ways. Rol­lie came first thing the morn­ing after I threw myself on his mercy, and as you see, smoothed every­thing out. He accepted a blue­berry and rasp­berry pan­cake after­ward and hung out at the pic­nic table, dis­cussing with me the options as regards our win­dowsills, sadly in need of paint. “Why don’t let’s wait until John is here, to decide? He has that lawyerly sort of voice, if you know what I mean, not that he’s ever been a lawyer, but you know. People’ll lis­ten to him.” Shoot, but not to me? Def­i­nitely not. Fair enough. Thank you, Rol­lie, for mak­ing my dri­ve­way dri­ve­able. I spent the rest of the day alter­nately rejoic­ing over it and find­ing bits I needed to shovel and rake to make it all straight, and can I tell you? Gravel is HEAVY. It likes to stay where it is. I hurt in mus­cles I never knew I had.

Then it was onto more per­fect friend encoun­ters. We were dying to see Alyssa, how­ever unen­cum­bered, sadly, she is with chil­dren, with Elliot and Annabelle both com­mit­ted to camps involv­ing WAY too much of their sum­mers, in my opin­ion! How I miss them both. But we agreed to meet Alyssa in Green­wich, as a sort of halfway point, and then it turned out Becky and her fam­ily would JUST have arrived, although with no fur­ni­ture and so in a hotel. So the day turned into friend heaven. First lunch at “Aux Delices”, the cater­ing out­fit and dar­ling cafe run by the lady who used to run “Mon­tra­chet” in our old Tribeca haunts… we each had a divine bean salad that I came home and com­pletely suc­cess­fully repli­cated, although it took me a day to find out what the “green” bean was…

Three Bean Salad with Red Pep­per, Green Onion and Sweet­corn
(serves 6-ish)

1 can each “small white beans,” black beans, THOR­OUGHLY rinsed and drained
1 cup edamame (soy beans)
3 ears sweet­corn, lightly boiled and cut off the cob and sep­a­rated
2 bunches scal­lions, cut on the bias right into the green part, in nice sliv­ers
1 red pep­per, juli­enned
1 clove gar­lic, smashed into tiny smithereens
1/3 cup olive oil
1 tbsp wasabi horse­rad­ish sauce (or blended with mus­tard)
juice of 1 lemon
sea salt to taste

Com­bine all the veg­eta­bles in a large bowl. Then shake together every­thing from the gar­lic onwards in a small jar and pour over salad, then toss thor­oughly. Very nice!

***************

I think if you wanted to add shred­ded roast chicken to this, or even seared tuna, you’d be in busi­ness for a fine entire lunch. As it was, it was lovely with the fresh­est tomato-mozzarella sand­wich you ever tasted, on the side.

We shopped! Nor­mally I hate to shop. See­ing more than about two dozen things in a shop makes me want to give every­thing I own to Oxfam or Good­will, never mind buy­ing any­thing NEW. But Anne Fontaine for a black t-shirt blouse, and JCrew for a ruf­fled v-neck button-up t-shirt? Done! Mostly it was beyond lovely just to fol­low Alyssa around, gos­sip­ing, shar­ing gos­sip on Tribeca news, John’s job news, Avery’s Prize Day and play news, Jill’s preg­nancy news… total plea­sure, total fun.

And then Becky was there! With Anna and Ellie, jump­ing out of the car to greet Avery. “I feel I already know you!” Alyssa said to Becky, jump­ing on Becky’s same words! To see my two best friends finally meet­ing each other almost made up for the real­iza­tion that now I’ve said good­bye to BOTH of them. No fair! How have I been lucky enough to have either one of them, much less both. I will not whine.

Off to fol­low Becky to their new house (empty!) to tour the glo­ri­ous place and the gor­geous grounds, com­plete with pond in which the girls felt it was nec­es­sary to throw many, many stones try­ing to rouse some­thing under the sur­face… I can pic­ture the whole fam­ily, fire­places, gor­geous kitchen, high ceil­ings, rolling lawns… We sat and chat­ted and rem­i­nisced and silently wished we could turn back the clock and be back in Lon­don, ready for the whole adven­ture to start again.

But there will be new adven­tures. Among them was… get­ting back to Red Gate Farm! How hard it seems to be for me to go ANY­WHERE with­out get­ting well and truly lost, no mat­ter how well I write things down. I ended up throw­ing myself on the mercy of a whole VERY Amer­i­can pic­nic table­ful of Amer­i­can guys out­side some nice IT com­pany, beg­ging them to tell me how to get to I-95. There is some­thing irre­sistibly Amer­i­can about guys in short-sleeve tennis-y sort of shirts, drink­ing Bud­weiser, look­ing crisp-cut and inno­cent and friendly. They fell all over them­selves to help me find I-95, and it was such a going-home expe­ri­ence, that American-ness. I can’t define it, but there’s some­thing boy­ish, kind-hearted, joy­ous and com­pe­tent about that pro­file that both reminds me of John and also makes me real­ize how far his gen­eral pro­file has come from there, since we’ve been away. It’s still part of him, but only part.

I did get home!

Another note to self: if you know FULL WELL your wash­ing machine has a dia­bol­i­cal spin cycle, and that you’ve put your nice bed­spread into it… don’t leave the plas­tic con­tainer of laun­dry deter­gent on top of it to… fall off. And split open, onto the floor of the laun­dry room. EEWW! Not as nasty as some­thing NASTY being spread all over my laun­dry room, but still, a big fat mess.

We’ve been enjoy­ing the gor­geous sunny days… but we’re miss­ing John and wait­ing for his arrival next month… can’t wait.

Well, from the sub­lime to the ridicu­lous, as they say. The sub­lime being the inau­gural sum­mer din­ner with Jill, Joel and Jane (and ?), and Anne, David and lit­tle Katie. How per­fect it was to have every­one here for bar­be­cued ribs and chicken, bean salad, tomato, moz­zarella and pesto (Jill took one look at the tomato plat­ter and asked, “What is every­one else going to eat?”, so she helped her­self to a knife and the rest of the toma­toes and fleshed out the salad). And my own invented potato salad, which was pretty suc­cess­ful, I think, con­sid­er­ing the amount that dis­ap­peared from the bowl:

Every­thing But the Kitchen Sink Potato Salad
(serves 6 as a side dish)

2 pounds new pota­toes, steamed and cut in half
1 large red onion, diced
2 bunches spring onions, sliced includ­ing the green bits
hand­ful radishes, sliced
hand­ful sliv­ered almonds, lightly toasted in a skil­let and cooled
4 sticks cel­ery, diced
6 slices bacon, pan-fried and well-drained on paper tow­els
3 ears sweet­corn, boiled for 3 min­utes and ker­nels cut off
1/2 cup may­on­naise
juice of 1 lemon

How easy is this: mix every­thing together (mix mayo and lemon juice in a lit­tle sep­a­rate bowl, then add), and toss. Delicious!

*****************

My mother in law swears by hard-boiled eggs in her potato salad, and if I’d had enough, I’d have added those too. Delicious.

Jane and Avery tram­polin­ing, baby Katie mewl­ing and wav­ing her hands, Jill dis­cussing preg­nancy with Anne and David, Joel offer­ing gen­tle tips on bring­ing small crea­tures home from the hos­pi­tal and last­ing sev­eral years with them at home… I felt it had been far longer than a mere almost-dozen years since I went through all this with my own child, who took very good care of her cousin. Well done, Avery, and Jane couldn’t be brighter (I say with total lack of bias). We found a huge stash of cray­fish in an aban­doned min­now trap in the pond, and Jane ges­tured wildly toward them, say­ing, “This pond is full of crustaceans!”

Well, would that life could have con­tin­ued on that peace­ful, cel­e­bra­tory, gen­tle and deli­cious path, but today brought… chaos. Let me explain.

On Fri­day I drove myself to the local quarry to order gravel for my piti­ful dri­ve­way project. Rol­lie had said eight yards, and the quarry guy said, “That’ll run you about 10 tons,” and looked at me ques­tion­ingly, as if I might have some­thing to con­tribute to the con­ver­sa­tion. “That sounds plau­si­ble,” I offered, and signed the credit card slip. Then as I turned to go, the guy asked, “Will you want that delivered?”

!!!!

Avery said later, “I mean, nine tons maybe we could get home by our­selves, but ten tons? For­get it!”

So this morn­ing, in advance of the optional deliv­ery, I had my phone on my bed­side table, and had seem­ingly just closed my eyes to sleep (I do tend to burn the mid­night oil when John is not around) when the ringer buzzed insis­tently at 7 a.m. “Waah?” I answered bril­liantly, and a chirpy girl­ish voice said, “I’m sorry, I see on our receipt here that we were sup­posed to call you BEFORE we came, and he’s in your DRI­VE­WAY right now!” Oh dear. I dragged on some sneak­ers and wished vio­lently to brush my teeth, but my mind was filled too much with images of a truck filled with ten tons of gravel bury­ing my car to give prece­dence to mat­ters of per­sonal hygiene. I rushed out and stuck my hand out to the dri­ver of the ENOR­MOUS truck idling in the dri­ve­way. He stepped down from the cab and I swear: he was one of Santa’s elves on off-season employ­ment. All of 5 feet high, hands smaller than Avery’s, and if he didn’t sport a long white beard, he gave every indi­ca­tion of doing so.

In the pour­ing rain, feel­ing fuzzy and silly, I pointed to the area euphemisti­cally known as “the dri­ve­way” and said, “We’d like the gravel right THERE. So I’ll just move my car…” and when I got back, I saw the truck had got no closer to the des­ti­na­tion for the gravel than when I’d left. “No, no, we want the gravel HERE,” I motioned. “No, lady, I’ll leave it right up here and let grav­ity do its work.” GRAV­ITY? It would take a severe read­just­ment of the move­ment of the earth to make any of that gravel move more than a hair’s breadth with­out heavy machin­ery. But it was rain­ing, it was early and… I hadn’t brushed my teeth, so I gave in. The rela­tion­ship between not brush­ing my teeth and let­ting ten tons of gravel go some­where I didn’t want them? This is my personality.

So the gravel tum­bled out where I didn’t want it. And then the truck advanced out of the dri­ve­way “area”, and I saw the bed of it clos­ing up, and tak­ing a big chunk of my tree branches with it. Oh dear. Unfor­tu­nately I watched this hap­pen­ing and held my breath while some­thing much worse was hap­pen­ing: the truck neatly clipped the end post of my ancient and lov­ingly painted white picket fence, and sim­ply… peeled the fence away. SERIOUSLY.

It all hap­pened in slowmo. “Stop, stop,” I shouted in muted tones, not want­ing to wake up the baby across the road. Finally he did, hav­ing dis­lodged a long bay of price­less cedar fenc­ing… “Son of a…” said the Naughty Elf, jump­ing down from the cab. “Son of a some­thing,” I silently con­curred. For heaven’s sake.

After express­ing his qual­i­fied and non-guilt-accepting “sorry,”, the elf drove away, say­ing, “Go back to sleep, now.” Oh sure, with ten tons of gravel in two breast-shaped pyra­mids the size of small moun­tains nowhere near their des­ti­na­tion, and sev­eral hun­dred dol­lars’ worth of Con­necti­cut Preser­va­tion Trust fenc­ing on the ground in the pour­ing rain. Nighty-night!

Well, it was a long day of wait­ing for it to stop rain­ing and then Avery and me stomp­ing up and down on the breasts, feel­ing our hearts pound and calves ache, say­ing, “This is actu­ally fun, and such good exer­cise!” only to real­ize after about an hour that we had made NO DENT in the pyra­mids. None. So no! I received a laconic and drip­ping wet “acci­dent inves­ti­ga­tor” and watched her count pick­ets and mea­sure inches and mut­ter unhelp­fully. Sigh.

That was my morn­ing. That and mak­ing a big vat of:

Garbage Soup, AKA Kristen’s Gaz­pa­cho
(serves LOTS)

2 soup-can size whole plum toma­toes
3 small seed­less, or 1 seeded hydro­ponic cucum­ber
1 red bell pep­per
1 red onion, quar­tered
1 large hand­ful nuts (any kind!)
1 large hand­ful bread crumbs (any kind!)
3 cups home­made chicken stock
1/2 cup white wine vine­gar
1/2 cup veg­etable oil
1 tbsp each: ground cumin, ground cloves
2 tsps ground cloves
salt to taste
cream to taste

Seri­ously: so much of this soup is stuff you might have thrown away. For one thing, you can use tired cucum­bers, tired pep­pers, tired onions you’ve used half of for tuna salad, or sand­wiches. Never throw these things away! They can always be ground up for soup.

Then, say your adorable neigh­bors bring you a rotis­serie chicken to wel­come you home. You eat some for din­ner, grind the rest of the breast up with some mayo and tar­ragon for chicken salad. Throw the car­cass in a stock­pot with some cel­ery and onion and car­rot and boil for an hour. Strain, and you’ve got… chicken stock for your soup.

Then you KNOW the air­line will insist that your child wants those two pack­ets of macadamia nuts from Lon­don to here, and YOU know she won’t want them. DON’T SAY SO. Take them, and throw them into your soup. And that heel of the loaf of bread your neigh­bors left along with the chicken? You ate all the rest for toast? Throw that in too.

So grind up in your Cuisi­nart as many of these ingre­di­ents as will fit, pour­ing them into a very large bowl as you go along. Then mix thor­oughly, and VOILA. Chill thor­oughly (if you have room in your freezer it won’t take long). Garbage soup. Every­one will thank you, and just think what you’ve used up that you almost threw away.

**********************

Well, we sal­vaged our after­noon by dri­ving to Sey­mour to see “Kit Kit­tredge: An Amer­i­can Girl.” I’d love to tell you it was awful, a waste of money, a mean­ing­less foray into the relent­less mer­chan­dis­ing of Amer­i­can his­tory. But… it was lovely. Beau­ti­fully cast (although Chris O’Donnell seemed a bit young to be the dad), gor­geously cos­tumed, sweetly evoca­tive Mid­west­ern neigh­bor­hoods (although I think it was shot in Canada). A nice Depres­sion sto­ry­line, nice moral lines, but humor too, and emo­tion. Take any lit­tle girl you know, or for that mat­ter, any per­son who was a child dur­ing the Depres­sion. You’ll be glad you did.

Home to:

Cashew Beef with Red Pep­pers and Car­rots, on Angel Hair Pasta
(serves two, with leftovers)

2 filet mignon steaks, sliced thin
3 tbsps soy sauce
2 tbsps sesame oil
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
1-inch knob gin­ger, peeled and minced
hand­ful baby car­rots, sliced thin
2 red bell pep­pers, sliced thin
1/2 pack­age bean sprouts
hand­ful cashews
2 hand­fuls angel-hair pasta, bro­ken in half

Place the beef and soy sauce and oil in a shal­low bowl and mix well. Leave to mar­i­nate while you pre­pare the gar­lic, gin­ger and vegetables.

Put water to boil for angel-hair pasta.

Heat a large skil­let and throw in the beef. Toss well until cooked through, the remove with slot­ted spoon or tongs to a serv­ing bowl, leav­ing as much cook­ing liq­uid behind as pos­si­ble. Heat skil­let again and throw in gar­lic, gin­ger, car­rots and pep­pers. Toss over high heat until car­rots are JUST cooked.

Put pasta on to boil. Then add beef and sprouts and cashews to the veg­eta­bles in the skil­let and toss till heated through. Drain pasta and toss with every­thing in the skil­let. DONE.

*****************

You can always add more soy sauce if you need more fla­vor. It’s a lovely col­or­ful, low-calorie stir-fry with every­thing: veg­eta­bles, pro­tein, a bit of pasta, just lovely. I was totally inspired by the gor­geous chicken dish my brother in law made for me this week: his was a rather more Italian-ish dish with Marsala and parme­san, but the car­rots and pep­pers, and the noo­dles, were purely stolen from him. Thank you, Joel!

So tomor­row is another day. I fear it will bring the DMV to my life, as I attempt to become legally reg­is­tered (my car, I mean, not me) in Con­necti­cut. And a ten­nis les­son! Because play­ing on our own, just the two of us, guess what Avery and I dis­cov­ered? In order to play ten­nis, ONE of you must know how… to play ten­nis. Because all we did was try to serve (not so good there), try to hit back (hmm, a lit­tle rusty) and chase balls around the courts (very accom­plished!). So a les­son with Val, the swarthy pro­fes­sional, will be fun. And after a tear­ful visit to his din­ing room table tonight, I am for­tu­nate enough to have Rollie’s promise to help flat­ten my dri­ve­way breasts tomor­row morn­ing. Fin­gers crossed. Some­times flat is GOOD, trust me.

Well, that’s the least of the trans­for­ma­tions in our lives from 48 hours ago until now. Yes, when we left our lovely lit­tle Con­necti­cut hide­away in Decem­ber, the back meadow was… a meadow. In fact, it was a bit­ter win­ter waste­land rep­re­sent­ing what we knew from expe­ri­ence would morph into a spring phe­nom­e­non of tan­gled over­whelm­ing green, and by the height of sum­mer would be an over­grown jun­gle inhab­ited only by deer, coy­otes and… ticks. I per­son­ally have never actu­ally been very far into that par­tic­u­lar bit of the acreage that com­prises our homestead.

Well.

Since then, our lovely neigh­bors up the road, Mark who so kindly helped us paint our fence last sum­mer and his sweet wife and lit­tle daugh­ter, have trans­formed the whole lot into a pas­ture for their horses! It’s an unrec­og­niz­ably civ­i­lized space back there, bounded by some sort of elec­tri­cal fenc­ing so that the even­tual ponies will not be allowed to eat until they burst.

As I say, how­ever, that’s the least of the ways in which we feel we’ve fallen down a rab­bit hole from the urban sprawl, end­less com­pe­ti­tion, crammed social cal­en­dar, long list of impen­e­tra­ble respon­si­bil­i­ties (and great gro­cery shop­ping), plus COLD RAIN that is our life in Lon­don, left behind just two days ago. Here, instead, we are liv­ing in a wel­ter of green grow­ing things, a house full of sum­mer mem­o­ries and spi­der webs, pro­duce stands full of sweet corn and basil, over­pow­er­ing heat and humid­ity, and the relent­less cheer­i­ness of Amer­i­can life! It’s just hard to believe that one can have both lives in one.

The weather greeted us as an open hand in our faces: my hair has exploded in a wel­ter of embar­rass­ing curls, all over my head. We take show­ers and then imme­di­ately start pulling up weeds, sticks from the lawn, yank­ing the tram­po­line out of the big barn (cov­ered in bat poo, yuck), and are thus instantly cov­ered in sweat again. Need­less to say… we are in heaven.

A sort of trun­cated heaven, in which there are (for the first two days, any­way) no tele­phone, inter­net or car. We arrived from the air­port late-ish on Mon­day to find the dri­ve­way (I use the term loosely, refer­ring to the space cov­ered by grass and weeds that SHOULD be the dri­ve­way) occu­pied by dear farmer Rollie’s pickup truck, his two helpers and some ran­dom uni­ver­sity boy try­ing to con­duct a sur­vey into the edu­ca­tional sys­tem of South­bury. Why all these peo­ple? Dead bat­tery in the sta­tion wagon, pre­dictably, and it took all of two days to get it sorted, thank you Rol­lie. In the mean­time, we went into the house to find a refrig­er­a­tor full of food from our dear neigh­bors Anne and David (and their dar­ling new baby Katie)… a roast chicken, ears of splen­did sweet­corn, a loaf of bread, eggs, you name it. Could we have bet­ter neigh­bors? Rhetor­i­cal question.

So Avery and I doggedly stayed up until the wee hours to avoid jet lag, and were up with the chick­ens the next day to sur­vey our domain. What accounts for the seren­ity here? Cer­tainly there’s no short­age of work to be done: down­spouts hideous, weeds every­where, win­dowsills crum­bling, dri­ve­way in des­per­ate need of 7 yards (would you believe that’s how it’s mea­sured? Rol­lie says, and Rol­lie knows) of gravel. But there is some­thing of an eter­nal wel­come in Rollie’s wife Judy’s visit, a quick, shy New Eng­land hug, her bas­ket of red gera­ni­ums to greet us on our stag­ger­ing steps encum­bered by lug­gage, up to the house. And a look both ways to cross the road to Anne and David (Avery ask­ing all morn­ing yes­ter­day “Is this too early to visit peo­ple with a new baby?”), rejoic­ing over the sleep­ing mirac­u­lous crea­ture in her bassinet, pre­sent­ing them with the “cer­e­mo­nial first bowl of pesto of the year…”

And my brand of gar­den­ing, which I explained to my mother in law, is of the “reduc­tive” rather than the “addi­tive” school: pic­ture Michelan­gelo ver­sus Degas. I sculpt in REMOV­ING, rather than PLANT­ING. I can con­jure up no inter­est in putting things into the ground, but I don’t mind a lit­tle time spent pulling up weeds and gath­er­ing up sticks from the lawn to throw over the ever-useful back fence to clear up the place. So Avery and slaved this after­noon to make the lawn pre­sentable, and peri­od­i­cally hoped Rol­lie would come back to fix the dead car bat­tery so we could go visit Jill, Joel and Jane tomor­row. And yes! As I spatch­cocked and mar­i­nated my Cor­nish game hens, I found time to help Rol­lie remove the old bat­tery and put in the new, totally flash­ing back to my child­hood spent help­ing my dad do things to cars (how I have retained none of this knowl­edge, I can­not explain). To hear the starter turn over! Bliss. To drop one of the beau­ti­fully char­grilled game hens into the newly-raked and de-sticked lawn? Price­less. Avery and I per­se­vered in eat­ing din­ner, but I wouldn’t rec­om­mend even the clean­est Con­necti­cut crunchy dirt as a condi­ment for your next barbecue.

Sigh. We miss John. We miss the cats. But some­thing came and took away the half apple Avery left under the bird feeder, so our hopes are high that our usual ground­hog Gary will reap­pear once he knows there is food to be had. We’ve had a clue that we’re not alone: after my first load of lawn sticks went over the back fence, there was the unmis­tak­able aroma of… skunk. As long as it’s not ON ME, I don’t object at all to skunk. I hope he didn’t feel we were reject­ing him. A lit­tle half can­teloupe set tempt­ingly in the usual back­yard snack area should do the trick.

So the long and short of it is: we’re back in the sum­mer­time mode. No sched­ule, no expec­ta­tions, no makeup, no iron­ing. On the plus side: end­less corn on the cob, fresh crab­meat, live lob­sters on Thurs­days, ten­nis lessons to begin on Fri­day, fam­ily to appre­ci­ate, blue blue skies the order of the day. Wish you were here.

I know I always say this, and I must sound like the most dreary layabout, but I can hardly get my mind around the indis­putable fact that by this time tomor­row, I will be in my house in Con­necti­cut (or at least in a smelly hot car ser­vice from the air­port on the WAY there), and not in my house in London.

I must not get around enough! It always strikes me with a hor­ri­ble lurch, and then a day or so of ner­vous stom­ach, and not sleep­ing, to pic­ture not being here, and being there. And then of course I’ll repeat it all in Sep­tem­ber with the thought of not being there, but being HERE. It’s partly to do with leav­ing the cats, which I hate, and leav­ing my new house, which seems hard, and now leav­ing my per­fectly good hus­band. Would you believe that after a year and a half of being hap­pily unem­ployed, the per­fect job began… last week? So he may join us in August. Five or more weeks apart? I don’t groove to that. But it is not in my hands to con­trol. I also worry about his not being here when I’m not here: if he’s gal­li­vant­ing off in India this com­ing week and Qatar the next…

Yes, he’s been made Gen­eral Part­ner in a pri­vate equity firm. In the­ory I know what this means, or at least I’ve explained it in a min­i­mal way: “he’ll find peo­ple to invest their money, and then find projects to invest it in.” John rolls his eyes over the intensely ellip­ti­cal nature of this expla­na­tion, but allows as how it’s “sort of OK.” Avery wor­ries, “That sounds risky.” I say, “Yes, but only with other people’s money, so that’s all right.” In truth, no one could be more risk-averse than my hus­band, and yet adven­ture­some. Don’t get me started on all his good qual­i­ties, when I won’t be with any of them for the fore­see­able future. Today we were invited to lunch by the sin­gle mother of one of Avery’s upcom­ing school­mates, and as we parted at the door she said to John, “If you feel lonely, give me a call and we’ll get together.” Then sud­denly she turned to me. “Not like that sounded!” Oh dear.

Sigh. It is very odd to con­tem­plate all the changes in our lives: a new home, a new school, a new job. Only I remain, as usual, JUST THE SAME. I sup­pose that’s my role: remain the same so that all the plan­ets that orbit around can orbit to their hearts’ con­tent and there will be still, clean laun­dry and some­thing to eat when they come back.

I do think we could all use a vaca­tion from the last week of may­hem. It’s so funny: I started out with a very gen­eral list of “Mon­day: do such and such. Tues­day: do such and such.” I even typed it out. Then as the hours went by the lists got more and more com­pli­cated, involv­ing actual timed moments to find a cab, gro­cery lists, squeez­ing in a trip to the sta­tion­ers’ for wrap­ping paper for a last-minute gift. At any rate, Mon­day last found me roast­ing a chicken at 10 am., not a nor­mal thing for me to do. This was in prepa­ra­tion for my lun­cheon guests while John and his mother were at Wim­ble­don (Roger Fed­erer, Cen­tre Court, thanks to my bril­liant and gen­er­ous sis­ter Jill). My lunch was such a treat: my friend Sue, who is film and stage addicted, and our mutual friend Car­o­line who is sim­i­larly obsessed. No other friends in my life would agree to come to my house and nat­ter on about Richard Armitage and Matthew Mac­fadyen all after­noon. I raced around dur­ing the morn­ing Avery was at school, con­coct­ing my chicken salad, which relies on a chicken roasted JUST for the pur­pose: plus green onions sliced, pine nuts toasted, plenty of cel­ery, lemon zest and red onion diced, and JUST enough lemon-juiced may­on­naise to hold it together. That with a nice cheese board and a bit of baguette… then I raced off to get Avery and her beloved Anna at school, and brought them home to throw some lunch to them and leave me with my friends! Cal­lous, but true. In the patchy sun­light of the gar­den, after lunch we had tea and gos­sip and the fun of girl­friends. Irre­place­able, really.

From there it was a race to get the girls to the pre-play cos­tume checks on time. And the play was LOVELY. To hear the songs from “Alice in Won­der­land” not just in a sin­gle voice in the bath, but from the throats of many on stage, was a rev­e­la­tion. How hard they had all worked! The surly cater­pil­lar played by Ami, the aggres­sive “Mock Tur­tle” played by Sophia, the won­der­ful music… and Avery had noth­ing much do to but wait until the next night when she would take over the nar­ra­tor from her friend Julia. The mem­o­riza­tion of the lines was deemed too much for a girl to do two nights in a row, so they split it up. She was fairly champ­ing at the bit!

Tues­day was more of the same: a nice car­pool­ing mother brought Avery and Anna home and we whisked them off for a cel­e­bra­tory lunch at Cafe Rouge, where we all told hor­ren­dous jokes and shared all each other’s food, and gen­er­ally wished that times like that could go on for­ever: when Avery and her beloved Anna could be together, laugh­ing at each other’s awful punch lines, walk­ing along with arms around each other’s necks, uni­form dresses pulling all over the place, young and inno­cent in the sun­shine. A beau­ti­ful afternoon.

Then it was onto gath­er­ing them up with all their belong­ings and get­ting them to the school early enough for makeup, and John’s mom, John and I to Lib­erty to try to order the fab­ric FINALLY for our uphol­stery over the sum­mer. I know it sounds cal­lous, but the only thing more incon­ve­nient than dis­con­tin­ued fab­ric sam­ples is… a dis­con­tin­ued uphol­sterer. Mr Frost is much mourned, and his lovely appren­tice says sadly, “This is what we always planned, my tak­ing over, but not this sud­denly. No one was ready.” And so in the mid­dle stand our sofa and bench, wait­ing sadly in un-upholstered un-glory. But John chose just what he wanted, and ordered it hap­pily as I spent some unex­pected shop­ping time with his mother. She is the ONLY per­son who makes shop­ping for clothes any fun, and I should always remem­ber this and squeeze in some time with her to do so, since nor­mally I’d rather have hot nee­dles stuck in my eyes than try on clothes. But her “I can totally see this on you,” always man­ages to get me out of my neg­a­tive funk in which I am all huge shoul­ders in the mir­ror and messy hair and no makeup.

And Avery in the play… can I kvell? Sim­ply superb. She stood per­fectly still, no unnec­es­sary ges­tures, no fid­dling about. Her eyes sparkled like stars and her voice hit all the right notes, and she ACTED. She com­manded the stage when she was in the right, and when she needed to fade she did so, but she was always in char­ac­ter, watch­ing the action and jump­ing in when it was her time. We were so PROUD of her! Just glo­ri­ous. Later one of her fel­low lit­tle actresses said to me, “When Avery played the part, I could under­stand why I was meant to say what I said. It made sense.” Some­how she invested in the part a total under­stand­ing of who she was meant to be. Good girl.

At din­ner in the high street after, while John strug­gled with his new job via iPhone and Avery opened the gor­geous lit­tle paper­weight that was her present from her Nonna, Anna’s fam­ily came ambling by and invited Avery to spend the fol­low­ing night at their house for a farewell sleep­over. Oh dear, I felt myself approach­ing the awful real­iza­tion that as Anna’s friend­ship with Avery came to a close (at least on that dear, daily sort of basis that is so for­get­tably pre­cious), so was my friend­ship with her mommy Becky. No more col­laps­ing at Becky’s kitchen table with some tale or other of woe and need of sup­port. No more meet­ing up after read-aloud morn­ings for lux­u­ri­ous cof­fees together, full of unchar­i­ta­ble gos­sip from me and help­ful mur­mur­ings from Becky. No more hear­ing the door­bell ring and it was Becky either drop­ping off her own child, or chil­dren, or mine, or pick­ing hers up, or mine. No more per­fect lis­ten­ing ear to the inevitable crises that come with mar­riage and school­child­ren, mov­ing, set­tling in, friend­ship quar­rels, gro­cery lists, advice, LISTENING.

As if we needed any more emo­tion, the next day was Speech Day, oth­er­wise known as Prize Day to the girls. I took Avery in the dreaded tube, so her newly-employed father could sur­vive some cri­sis phone calls in the morn­ing, and ended up killing time in Star­bucks with sev­eral mother friends, and a drop-in from our beloved Miss Leslie, the form teacher. Again, I found myself think­ing, “How can I leave these peo­ple? Our shared jokes, our gos­sipy quips about someone’s high­light job or badly-behaved child or run­away nanny or shop­ping spree…” And Miss Leslie’s dark sparkling naughty laugh­ter, shy­ing away from how she knows she will miss our lit­tle dar­lings… And then I remem­bered: it was not so long ago that I just arrived at the school and spent a lot of whingey time feel­ing sorry for what I had left behind THAT TIME. So surely all will be well. One can never replace the dear friends, the dear mem­o­ries and times, but more good ones will come. I HOPE.

Still, it was on to Prize Day and what a glory it was! The speeches hon­or­ing the depart­ing lovely, lovely head­mistress. The chron­i­cles from a tear­ful Chair­man of the Board, telling of her invent­ing the school from whole cloth five years ago, his wor­ry­ing that the school would never come off. “But I did not reckon on the Pied Piper that is our head­mistress…” At the end of his speech the par­ents sim­ply BURST onto their feet for the longest stand­ing ova­tion, and the most tears, you can imag­ine. I thought to myself how the school, and the head, and the teach­ers, and the gulls, had changed Avery’s life for­ever. They had turned her from a girl who tended to hide in the class­room and avoid anyone’s atten­tion, into a girl who was happy to push her­self to do her best, to take one of the leads on the school play! To feel con­fi­dent and win prizes and be happy. We were all in floods of emo­tion. To have John’s mom next to me was an unbe­liev­able treat, wit­ness­ing such a cul­tural divide, such a for­eign and won­der­ful cer­e­mony: “My Lords and Ladies, and Gen­tle­men, may I offer my Report of the School on its Fifth Anniversary…”

Avery won her prizes and was happy. And I took her to Anna’s birth­day party, while John’s mom bravely took her­self off in the spitty rain to shop all on her own. And well she did, because the din at Anna’s party was unbe­liev­able! Think what effect CAF­FEINE will have on these chil­dren, even­tu­ally! I can’t. I helped Becky arrange the pil­low­cases on which they were all writ­ing mes­sages to each other, and then pass out pieces of pizza, and then may­hem as they decided to dance to super-loud “Wicked” sound­track. Again, though, as crazy as it all was, I saw it pass through our lives as the “last” again, of a beloved rit­ual. The girls, so young in their uni­forms, danc­ing and singing, eat­ing cup­cakes and sign­ing good­bye cards for each other, falling down hug­ging each other: the last of an end­less round of pre-grownup up par­ties. Sweet young things.

I basely aban­doned Becky to race home and pick up my ordered scal­lops at Shepherd’s Bush Mar­ket and take them home to clean them. Never let it be said that I fall down on pick­ing up a scal­lop order even though the job of prepar­ing them between Prize Day and the head’s good­bye party put the chore some­where behind a Botox ses­sion in terms of pri­or­i­ties. No, off I went. And brought them home. And dumped them in the sink and began to open them… EEEWWW!! Sim­ply the most dis­gust­ing, revolt­ing, appetite-suppressing job I have ever per­formed. What deluded per­son first looked at these things and thought, “With a lit­tle pars­ley, gar­lic and spaghetti, these would be divine”? Hor­ri­ble! Yet I per­se­vered, and left the bowl of pris­tine lit­tle hockey pucks in the fridge, with my minced gar­lic and pars­ley in lit­tle bowls on the counter, to go meet John’s mom to buy Avery a bathing suit.

And buy it we did. With exhausted feet and credit cards with num­bers worn off from all the spend­ing I had been doing lately, we got that *&^^ bathing suit, at Debenham’s. Then we repaired to Anna’s house to retrieve Avery and take her to school for the Senior Choir’s ser­e­nade of the retir­ing head­mistress. Can I just say: it doesn’t get any more sen­ti­men­tal than the gulls singing, “Fly­ing Free” all about spread­ing their wings and reach­ing for the skies… except… the head was wear­ing a strap­less, elec­tric blue silk gown embroi­dered with but­ter­flies in sequin form, stiletto heels and… a tiara? Or did I imag­ine the tiara? Never mind, it felt like she was wear­ing a tiara. And the girls sang like lit­tle angels. I was so busy bit­ing onto my tongue to keep from cry­ing that I didn’t even get to lis­ten prop­erly. And then we came home to our scal­lops. And I’m sorry to say: they were so BEYOND fresh and deli­cious that I may find myself clean­ing them AGAIN some­day. I don’t look for­ward to it, but they were SUB­LIME. John and his mom and I sat back in the twi­light gath­er­ing over the gar­den and looked at the light reflected off Avery’s sil­ver cups and felt… John’s dad smil­ing over it all.

Thurs­day was the crown­ing sob­bing event of it all. I had thought I would be fine, with all the run-up of emo­tion to the end of every­thing. But say­ing good­bye to Becky, and watch­ing Avery, Anna and Ellie cling to each other, mute but tear­ful in their dis­tress, was sim­ply heart-wrenching. The end of a glo­ri­ous two-and-a-half year odyssey of dis­cov­ery, friend­ship, trust, love and fun. Good­bye to that lovely bit of our lives.

But from pathos to bathos: Fri­day we took Avery to her lit­tle classmate’s house for a Fourth of July birth­day party com­plete with a gar­den full of water slides and tram­po­lines, while I scoured Kens­ing­ton for a food my neu­rotic cat can eat while I’m away. Yes, it turns out Wim­sey is aller­gic to wheat, rice, soy and… wait for it… peanuts. “I’m afraid it’s lights out for all those Japan­ese crack­ers he’s been enjoy­ing with his cock­tails,” the vet said, and well he can laugh because it’s not his lit­tle dar­ling who’s suf­fer­ing. But no, the food must be bought by pre­scrip­tion at the VET. Of course it must. Sigh. Home to prep our OWN Fourth of July party: dozens of steamed Dublin Bay Prawns with gar­lic may­on­naise, the bor­lotti bean salad, potato salad, and an ulti­mately rather unnec­es­sary grilled rump steak, but a lovely salsa verde along­side. And John’s mom con­cocted an Eton Mess for Avery. And our lovely friends Vin­cent and Peter arrived and we all repaired to the gar­den for a can­dlelit party… glorious.

Now… John’s mom has cal­lously aban­doned us for her own life in Amer­ica. We miss her des­per­ately, and the cel­e­bra­tory glim­mer she casts over our insane lives. And we are about to go off too. The next you hear from me… Con­necti­cut! A whole ‘nother cast of char­ac­ters and events and par­ties and dishes and… well, you know. My life. See you there.